US Geological Survey, Biological Resources Discipline
Reston, VA
November 7, 2005
Abbreviated Minutes
Federal Geographic Data Committee: Overview and Plans
Interagency Leveraging Through Digital Government
Federal Information and Records Manager’s Council (FIRM): Opportunities for Cooperation
USGS Biodiversity Informatics Program Showcase
Biodiversity Informatics Challenges
The NBII Digital Image Library
Wildlife Disease Information Node
Invasive Species Forecasting Using GIS Layers
Welcome
Dr. Walter Warnick, CENDI Chair, opened the meeting at 9:10 am. He thanked USGS/BRD for hosting the meeting.
LEVERAGING INTERAGENCY COOPERATION
“Federal Geographic Data Committee: Overview and Plans” Leslie Armstrong, Deputy Staff Director, Federal Geographic Data Committee
The National Spatial Data Infrastructure was established by Executive Order 12906 in April 1994. OMB Circular A-16 (revised August 2002) incorporates the EO and authorizes the FGDC as the coordinating body for NSDI. There are various components to the NSDI including the clearinghouse catalog, metadata, a framework, geo data, standards across business lines for geographic services, and partnerships.
The FGDC is composed of 19 federal agencies and other organizations, governed by a Steering Committee. There are a number of working groups with thematic subcommittees that cut across the working groups. The 16 staff that support the FGDC, are located at USGS under the Geospatial Information Officer and CIO, Karen Sidarelis. Within USGS, the FGDC is part of the National Geospatial Programs Office, which also includes Geo One-Stop, the National Map, and the Department of Interior’s Enterprise GIS.
The FGDC and its agencies have been doing metadata for 20 years. In 2004, it conducted some strategic planning to better plan for the next steps. Case studies and white papers were created and surveys were conducted. Through this exercise, three focus areas were identified: Communicating the Message, Making the Framework Real, and Partnerships with Purpose. Each focus area has three to five objectives with teams leading the work on each objective.
Major activities to communicate the message have included a focus on business cases, including presentations to agencies, case studies, and the development of a Return on Investment Workbook and template. Training is extremely important. The Metadata Core Curriculum will soon be published online to complement other agency resources for training. Metadata training is always an issue; they recently did a survey and found that only about 70 percent of the agencies were complying.
Activities in support of making the framework a reality include various standards activities. The FGDC works under the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS). Its standards process is modeled after those of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Standards Organization (ISO). FGDC standards are structured and well documented, including a taxonomy, data dictionary and model using Unified Modeling Language (UML). The final review of the standards is ongoing through December 2005. A major emphasis in the standards arena is to require standards as part of appropriate procurements.
New standards are also being considered within the framework. The approved proposals include an address standards and a shoreline standard. Other popular candidates include geographic names, buildings and facilities, watershed boundaries, earth cover, and wetlands.
Publishing metadata is extremely important. A survey found that only 70 percent of the agencies were complying here as well. The Draft Metadata Profile Summary Report was released in September 2005. The FGDC also focuses on metadata in specific environments. For example, an experts workshop on geospatial metadata for urban areas was held in May 2005. A draft Urban Framework Guidebook will be issued in December 2005.
With regard to its focus on partnerships, the FGDC has engaged tribal governments. Tribal training courses were institutionalized at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Current training activities have included 41 tribes with 140 participants.
As part of the FGDC outreach program, they engage non-government organizations. This includes working with telecommunication companies, health facilities, and others. There is a new agreement with State Councils to give 10 grants of $50,000 each. The states will provide the detailed level while the federal government will provide the higher level. There is a new contract for educational materials and an Imagery of the Nation proposal which coordinates aerial photography.
The Governance Team has specific objectives to enhance the role and function of the FGDC, establish a broader level of participation, and improve the management of federal geospatial programs. There has been a lot of pressure to broaden the FGDC to the point where it would require a FACA (Federal Advisory Committee Act). Therefore, they are considering some new governance structures that would expand the group without this requirement.
FGDC is involved in the development of the geospatial profile for the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), which provides guidance to agency architectures. They are looking at business, performance, and service models. The approach is to document current models and then look across the government and come up with a transition plan and how to get there. The third version of the profile was released recently. The target for determining performance measures and service types is March 2006.
The FGDC must report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) every year. This year, they will take information from GeoSpatial One-Stop for the report. It will be increasingly important to measure progress on One-Stop, which was used by Homeland Security during Hurricane Katrina. Better use statistics are needed; some of this will be available for agencies to use in promotion and selling the importance of creating metadata.
“Interagency Leveraging Through Digital Government” Lawrence Brandt, Program Manager, Digital Government, National Science Foundation
The Digital Government Program is a carefully managed program to engage and support computer science and information technology researchers in demonstrating e-government solutions. The projects are inherently interdisciplinary, cross-sector, expensive, collaborative, and time consuming. The goal is to bring researchers together with government program managers to tackle problems of common interest. Problems that arise from government can inspire important research and lead to strategic knowledge for government agencies. The Digital Government (DG) Program is now a $10 million per year program.
A May 1997 workshop, “R&D Opportunities in Federal Information Services,” recommended the establishment of a research program in the government domain that involves government program managers from the inception of the project. A National Academy of Science Study in 2002 showed that researchers benefit from real-world challenges. It cited the DG Program for taking the lead in fostering connections between researchers and government innovation and for serving as a catalyst.
The agencies that are most interested in the Digital Government funding opportunities are those that can’t buy something “off the shelf” to do the job. The Program seeks to bridge the gap between R&D and applications. It covers all information/communication technologies, such as information and knowledge management, privacy/confidentiality, e-commerce in the government context, and human-computer interaction.
The Program is particularly interested in creating a community where one doesn’t exist yet. Projects must have a strong government emphasis. These projects serve as testbed activities for academic ideas, while agencies get a strategic view of where things are going.
The Program is also interested in the effect of IT on governance and democracy. This includes the impact of IT on agencies as organizations. All government functions are candidates. Workshops have been held on Internet voting, vertical integration of federal, state, and local governments, and advancing a social science research program for digital government.
In addition, the program does a lot of outreach and education. Approximately four workshops are held each year. The annual grantee/partner conference draws approximately 200 participants. Digital Government 2006 will be held in San Diego. A monthly newsletter is also produced. A Digital Government peer-reviewed journal is in process.
Mr. Brandt identified a number of challenges for the DG Program. The work of facilitating and creating venues for government-academic partnerships is time consuming. It is important to manage expectations especially on the part of the government. A research grant is not a contract and there is no “deliverable”. Thought must be given to technology and knowledge transition once the grant is over. The multidisciplinary nature of the proposals poses a challenge for the peer review process. Government staffers are needed in solicitation, review, and management.
There are several ways to engage with NSF and with researchers. Agencies can gather information from NSF lectures and from the NSF web site, particularly the awards database. This can be helpful in identifying projects of interest that have or are nearing completion. Agency monies can be sent to supplement existing grants. The supplemental proposal must come from the grantee that the agency has selected. An agency can partner in proposals to NSF. However, these proposals must survive the peer review process.
There are two models for proposal calls. The old model is a call followed by project-by-project evaluation based solely on what proposals show up. The new model involves early and deep engagement via a workshop and a dedicated call for proposals with multi-agency funding. This approach worked well for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Informatics and for LC’s research into digital archiving and long-term preservation. Another larger call for broader technology will be issued in 2006.
Mr. Brandt suggested that CENDI agencies consider the Digital Government Program as an avenue for cross agency research interests. Several items in the work plan, including visualization, might be the focus of such activities. It is relatively easy to obtain funds for a workshop.
Action: CENDI agencies should consider a joint workshop with DG with each CENDI agency putting in a small amount.
“Federal Information and Records Manager’s Council (FIRM): Opportunities for Cooperation” John Paul Deley, Chair, EIA/FIRM Board of Directors
FIRM was founded in 1992 from a number of groups involved in information and records management. It is a group of professional information and records managers concerned about the entire records life cycle. FIRM’s purpose is “to empower all federal agency information management professionals by encouraging collegial partnerships that provide a forum for sharing knowledge and resources that lead to better government.” FIRM provides leadership, by bringing together a variety of professionals who manage the life cycle of federal information assets; provides advice and assistant to executive, legislative and judicial agencies and other federal entities that oversee federal information and records; provides a forum to advance professional knowledge and practices; and serves as an advocate for more efficient and effective programs and tools for the management of federal information.
FIRM members do not directly represent their agencies; they are a professional group of individual archivists, attorneys and records managers. The members are primarily from civilian agencies with some military and judicial representatives, two Board members and one “Friend”. The mailing list, which is updated after each event, has about 600 people. Affiliates are members of other related organizations.
FIRM is governed by a board which is elected each year. The current leadership includes representatives from the Energy Information Administration, the Internal Revenue Services, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Farm Credit Administration. Friends of the Board are honored partners, liaisons, advisors, and supporters who are proposed and approved annually by the Board. The current Friends of the Board include CENDI representatives Nancy Allard and R.L. Scott.
FIRM is primarily concerned with educational and professional development programs. All professional services and educational programs are free. Federal agencies are required by law to have records managers but their level varies as does their reporting structure. Training and outreach often include topical programs such as an event called Sedona on the Potomac that brought attorneys and judges together to discuss the freeze on records across the government. An event may be spurred by a particular event such as Hurricane Katrina or a particular court case. A panel is presented annually at FOSE. The recent Metadata Summit, which CENDI co-sponsored, was attended by approximately 120 people.
FIRM also evaluates policies and practices of interest to the membership. It will evaluate NARA’s Electronic Records Management ( ERM) tool kit. They are also evaluating E-FOIA, the E-government Act, etc., and trying to cross walk them so that the government e-records can be understood in their entirety. It is hoped that their efforts will result in money to agencies for preservation activities that ERA may not solve.
Mr. Deley suggested several ideas for partnerships with organizations such as CENDI. These include additional cooperative programs and workshops, comments on draft policies, guidelines, and standards, promoting standards, and shared speakers and expertise.
“USGS Biodiversity Informatics Program Showcase”
Tom Lahr and Staff
Biodiversity Informatics Challenges (Tom Lahr)
Advances in biological informatics have been prevalent in medical research for the past 20 years. It is only within the last five years that biodiversity informatics has emerged, integrating data from the natural world, from genomes to biomes. However, biodiversity is at the center and is linked to many other areas including human health and economics. It has been shown to provide a vital societal benefit in an ever shrinking world.
Biology ranges from genomes to biomes. The temporal, spatial, and biological scales vary widely. It involves other disciplines such as chemistry and physics, which may have different methodologies for data collection and analysis. There are significant issues of missing data and data quality. Access to data may be difficult across different institutions, such as museums and herbaria.
Linking people is also difficult. There are multiple institutions and institution types involved. A cultural shift about sharing is often necessary and discipline-based practices must be bridged. Conflicts of interest often arise.
This field is very complex because it involves data from satellites to museum specimens. The question is how to integrate all this data in light of new technologies.
The Biodiversity Informatics Program ranges from local to global and the NBII is involved in working on standards, methods and tools, throughout these levels. In particular, they are interested in common metadata standards and information retrieval tools such as DiGIR for specimen collections. Additional technology solutions being investigated include data extraction, the use of intelligent agents, user profiling, multi-lingual interfaces, the describing and sharing of models, and establishing the EcoGrid.
In 1998, the Presidents Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology reviewed the NBII and envisioned and NBII-2 with virtual laboratories and collaboration of diverse disciplines leading to advances in science and information science. This collaborative vision can not only solve the challenges raised by biological sciences, but also advance information and biological sciences. As technology evolves, biodiversity informatics will evolve as well.
The NBII Digital Image Library (Annette Olson)
The NBII Digital Image Library is a web resource of images related to nature and the environment from NBII nodes and a variety of partners. The collection is aimed at helping to identify species, providing images for education and publication and supporting special biological and regional collections. It is available to everyone and is open access. The Library currently has about 1000 images but partners have made overtures that would result in perhaps as many as 200,000 images.
Each image has metadata attached which makes the library searchable by taxon, region, special collection, and keyword. The images are included at the highest resolution possible to ensure long-term preservation. Images are quickly viewed by thumbnail versions, along with their metadata, and then the user can download the image in medium or high resolution . The map interface will improve as the geospatial mapping within the NBII is enhanced.
The benefit to the contributor is that the images are made accessible, are maintained in a secure repository, are well documented and are intended to be preserved over time. Contributors also retain their intellectual property rights. Many contributors and their organizations are also users of the Library.
While the main work at this point is in storing and serving images, it plans to be a gatew*ay to other image galleries. Standards for image sharing will be needed. Other current and future developments include multi-lingual metadata and web-site text, a shopping cart, enhanced searching, an “unidentified folder” where others can annotate and help to identify the image, and the inclusion of 3-D images, video and panoramic images.
Discussion
Ms. Frierson noted that there are several image collections available through Science.gov. These have been brought together by a search that displays the links to the collections. However, it does not do deep web searching within the image databases. It was suggested that deep web searching across the image collections might be investigated.
Ms. Klein suggested that the Creative Commons Licenses be investigated. This would allow the user to define follow-on rights so that the NBII and other collections could include images with more limited user rights by providing more specific information about rights.
Wildlife Disease Information Node (Robert Worrest)
The Wildlife Disease Information Node (WDIN) of the NBII is interested in the transmission of diseases within the wildlife population, the impact on the global economy and biodiversity, and the risk to human health and homeland security. Today, there is no central database or information system for common access to wildlife disease information. Initially, WDIN aims to facilitate access to data and information on wildlife and zoonotic diseases. Additional objectives include fostering partnerships, encouraging collaboration, promoting data standards that enable data integration, visualizing clusters on morbidity and mortality events, tracking the prevalence and spread of disease, predicting possible new disease outbreaks, identifying previously unrecognized relationships between wildlife, human, and domestic animal diseases, and helping to limit further disease spread and prevent outbreaks.
The WDIN Website allows users to search by wildlife disease, by human health impact, and geographically.
WDIN created a chronic wasting disease database and input tool. It provides a password-protected interface for the collection of chronic wasting disease information from the states. The WDIN expects to open up this input tool to collect data on other diseases such as avian flu. The WDIN is part of the Homeland Security Information Network, where it contributes to the health and public health portal.
Future directions for the WDIN include finding other partners, performing GAP analysis, enhancing spatial and time-series mapping applications, adding environmental layers, and improving the query capabilities. Other plans for the future include linking WDIN information to the National Map or to forecasting and modeling tools.
Invasive Species Forecasting Using GIS Layers (John Mosesso)
Invasive species are a major reason for the diminution of global biodiversity. They impact water supplies, cause power outages, reduce global agriculture, and cause disease epidemics such as cholera and West Nile virus. The conservative estimate is that they have a $2 billion impact annually. NBII is building a web-based system to help researchers and planners predict and manage the influx of invasive plants, animals and diseases. The NBII tries to collect information and make it useful across geographic areas and across datasets. The primary goal is to help researchers and planners, but everyone needs this information. Mr. Mosesso gave case studies including witchweed, the Asian long-horned beetle, and zebra mussels.
A key component of this work is ecological forecasting, which involves the analysis of multi-dimensional datasets. The University of Kansas and the San Diego Supercomputer Center have developed models that analyze a variety of factors surrounding the life of a species, such as climate, topography, soil type, land use, native species, light, etc. Then they go out and look for databases that provide this information.
The NBII does not create its own information, but it provides datasets and access to models and other tools. The goal is to find out and document who has the data and to promote standards to make it easier to identify and use.
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